


Times Like This

by likehandlingroses



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, F/F, Hogwarts Seventh Year
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-10-14 06:17:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20596088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likehandlingroses/pseuds/likehandlingroses
Summary: Dumbledore's Army is retreating to Neville's Room of Requirement headquarters...but Lavender is afraid that going there with Parvati means losing a sanctuary of their own.





	Times Like This

“I think we should go.” Parvati’s voice jolted Lavender out of her almost-sleep. She shifted in bed so she was facing Parvati, tucking a hand under her pillow. 

“What do you mean?” she asked, holding back a yawn. 

“You know. With Neville and Seamus and everyone.” Parvati’s voice was hushed, which Lavender felt was quite unnecessary. With the bed curtains drawn around them and the dormitory door shut for the night, Lavender’s bed remained one of the only safe places left at Hogwarts. 

Or at least, that’s how it felt, tucked in close to Parvati. 

When they were in bed together, Lavender would rather shut her eyes to the rest of the world. Pretend it was just her and Parvati. No You-Know-Who, no Carrows...nothing but the warmth of Parvati’s skin against hers as they both slept. 

And for some reason, Parvati had a mind to take that from them...have them both move to some ill-advised campground in the Room of Requirement...

She understood Parvati giving the idea its due consideration: half of the DA had already fled to the new hideout, and they were encouraging the rest to follow suit. 

But it seemed such a waste to run off now. 

“The summer holidays are right around the corner,” Lavender said. “And we’re seventh years; we never have to come back. We’ll be proper adults...we can make a real plan.” 

Parvati sighed and propped herself up on her elbow. “They already know we’re a part of it. If we make one wrong step, we’re done for. Especially with everyone else disappearing.”

She had that infuriating look of someone who had already decided they were right, but after seven years, Lavender was more than a match for that. 

“So we go to class and we keep our heads down, and then we leave this school and never look back,” she said, sitting up entirely. Parvati stared up at her, and where Lavender expected to see fire in her eyes, she could sense only exhaustion. 

“I can’t promise that I can do that...can you?” she said. “Can you look at me and say that if you see them torturing more first years--torturing  _ anyone _ \--that you’ll just keep your head down?”

Lavender blinked. How many times had she told Parvati that she didn’t like talking about those things here? In their space, in their sanctuary? All that pain and fear and hate...it didn’t belong in the same place where they’d spent hours laughing together. Where they’d first kissed.

You had to keep things separate, or you’d go mad. 

“If we have to do that in order to get out and make an actual difference, then--”

“--you say that now, but I know you.” Parvati reached out to clasp Lavender’s hand in her own, intertwining their fingers. “And you know me. We aren’t going to be able to make it without causing a stir. The longer we pretend, the more difficult it’s going to be to actually get out.”

Lavender squeezed Parvati’s hand, afraid of giving an answer. She was right...and yet...

“What are you thinking?” Parvati murmured. 

“I just...I don’t understand what they’re actually accomplishing in that place.”

“They’re surviving,” Parvati said, sitting up along with Lavender. “Not being beaten down every day in this hellhole. Keeping up the faith.”

And of course, didn’t that just make it sound like the most wonderful, lofty thing imaginable? Lavender--ashamed of her own hesitance--looked down at her hand in Parvati’s. 

“I suppose Padma is going?”

“Tomorrow.” 

“What did you tell her you were doing?” Lavender said, trying and failing to affect a light tone. 

Parvati raised an eyebrow. “I told her I had to talk to you first.”

“And what if I said I wasn’t going?” Lavender said. “Would you leave anyway?”

The answer took too long, but still it came: 

“Of course I wouldn’t.” Parvati placed a hand on Lavender’s cheek, which Lavender knew must mean she was looking frightened and uncertain and _ silly _ .

She was so tired of being treated like she was silly for feeling the way that she felt. 

“Well, it seems to me that you should…” she said, lifting her chin. “If it’s going to be  _ so impossible _ for you to carry on like this…”

Parvati’s hand dropped from Lavender’s face, her whole body pulling away. 

“If you’re going to be like that, then there’s no point in having this conversation…”

“Like what, exactly?” Lavender spat out, feeling sure she knew the answer. 

“Like I don’t have any feelings or I’m not scared too!” Parvati’s voice broke, but her glare wasn’t any less fierce for having tears in it. 

Lavender blinked back a sudden onslaught of her own tears. She had to stop crying all the time…

But why? Parvati didn’t mind if she cried; she cried as well. 

Wasn’t that part of what made things so easy with her? 

Lavender scooted closer to Parvati on the bed and wrapped her arms about Parvati’s neck.

“I’m sorry,” they both said at the same time. And neither of them needed to say that it was alright. 

“Do you think there’s any way out of this?” Lavender whispered. “Ever?”

Parvati held Lavender tight about the waist as she pulled back far enough to look Lavender in the eye. 

“I have to believe there is, because what’s the point otherwise?” she said, her voice shaking. 

Lavender nodded, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. There just wasn’t any way of knowing the right thing to do for certain. 

But she trusted Parvati. 

“It’s just...if we go...that’s it,” she said. “No going back on it.”

“I know.” A ghost of a smile crossed Parvati’s face. “That’s why I want it to be _ our  _ choice.”

She kissed Lavender, and--soft and short as it was--Lavender felt like the whole world could fit into that kiss. 

“And this?” she asked, tracing patterns on Parvati’s neck. “Will this work...when it’s all those people, and not just us?”

Parvati smiled properly now. “Is that what you’re scared of?” 

“A little.” There was such sanctity in loving someone privately, in having a space that was theirs...and what if it changed things, to move to a place where there would be no quiet, no sense of privacy? 

“After everything we’ve been through? We could work anywhere,” Parvati said, with such certainty that Lavender half-wondered why she’d ever doubted it. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This fic is inspired by the song "False God" by Taylor Swift.


End file.
